Wrap-up of Django sprint at Exoweb offices
On occasion of the second world-wide Django sprint we got together 12 people to sprint at Exoweb’s office yesterday.
The good:
It was great to see new Djangoistas, and it made me think there might even be enough interest for a Django user group in Beijing. There’s already a Python User Group in Beijing.
I personally found it fun to get down-and-dirty with the core Django framework. It’s good to work with a system that has such a complete set of tests and documentation. It has a feeling of quality about it.
I had never run Django’s test suite, nor had I looked at the their ticket system in detail. I think most people had a similar background. After the sprint I feel the barrier to contribute has been lowered, and I’m sure I’m not alone in contemplating doing some more contribution when I have spare time.
We did knock out a few tickets.
The bad:
Our timing was off. At GMT+8 we’re more than 12 hours ahead of Lawrence, KS, where the core developers had gathered. The next time we’ll make sure we start no earlier than the core developers. This time, however, we were massively off time-wise, and this had a couple of implications:
We were just getting ready to pick tickets when the Django site’s servers were shut down for routine maintenance, so for 2-3 hours we were struggling to keep active.
It wasn’t that clear what the actual status was for many tickets, and what was required to resolve them. With none of the core developers awake there weren’t anyone to ask either, so we were a bit stuck in many cases.
Our office is in a Hutong (side ally), hard to find on a good day, so we usually ensure people have a phone number they can call for directions. This “detail” somehow slipped my mind until the last minute, so one person wasted a couple of hours looking for the office before giving up.
Overall it was good; we made new friends and had fun with Django and Python, and I’m already looking forward to the next sprint.
December 2nd, 2007 at 21:43
It was really fun and a very good learning experience. I was there till about 10pm discussing with Ionut, Wang Chun and Barteur about how to fix a bug in Django, It seems our fix was not exactly what the Django developers wanted but it was atleast going the right direction.
Can’t wait for the next one!
December 2nd, 2007 at 22:21
Overall it was good. I just sent my my last patch (for this sprint) and feel that I accomplished something.
The next will be even better, I am sure!
December 3rd, 2007 at 08:17
[…] Bjørn also wrote about this. […]
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:42
i like the experience to find solution behind ionut,chee ming,wang chun. because ionut find the right ticket, he understand it, can show the error and begin to try the first patch, we sit down together and discuss several different ways to fix it.
when you finally find other’s neat method can resolve the problem you though no easy way, you will definitely trust the method pair programming.
next time we need such prepare: every should arrive some point like ionut’s 21:00 status, means reproduce ticket and source context ,then, pair and discussion will be very productive .
May 25th, 2008 at 12:13
[…] Exoweb is trying to actively engage in the Django and Python community, as well as other local communities like the Beijing Linux User Group (BLUG). They have hosted the Django Sprint in Beijing in December last year, and are currently planning other similar events. Additionally, some of the teams are developing extensions which they want to add to Django’s contribution repository, and a few developers are working on their own FOSS projects. In order to encourage it’s employees, Exoweb additionally offers a 10 per-cent time during which everyone is free to work on whatever they want. Exoweb also offers hosting for internal FOSS projects on contrib.exoweb.net. […]